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Isaac Asimov describes how AI will liberate humans and their creativity (1992)

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170 points bookofjoe | 3 comments | 10 Apr 25 14:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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janalsncm ◴[10 Apr 25 18:25 UTC] No.43646748[source]▶
> Isaac Asimov describes artificial intelligence as “a phrase that we use for any device that does things which, in the past, we have associated only with human intelligence.”

This is a pretty good definition, honestly. It explains the AI Effect quite well: calculators aren’t “AI” because it’s been a while since humans were the only ones who could do arithmetic. At one point they were, though.

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1. azinman2 ◴[10 Apr 25 18:27 UTC] No.43646765[source]▶
Although calculators can now do things almost no humans can do, or at least in any reasonable time. But most (now) wouldn’t call it AI. It’s a tool, with a very limited domain
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2. janalsncm ◴[10 Apr 25 18:39 UTC] No.43646878[source]▶
That’s my point, it’s not AI now. It used to be.
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3. hinkley ◴[10 Apr 25 19:29 UTC] No.43647290[source]▶
Similarly, we esteem performance optimizations so aggressively that a lot of things that used to be called performance work are now called architecture, good design. We just keep moving the goal posts to make things more comfortable.